Cold-weather Super Bowl was bad idea from the start

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Wes Welker and the Broncos are practicing in frigid temperatures on a field that is surrounded by snow since the NFL deemed a cold-weather Super Bowl a good idea.

One of the things most of us like about the NFL is that games are played in all kinds of weather. These are tough men, and we appreciate that they’re required to play in tough — or even brutal — conditions.

It seems perfectly rational in that respect. We love the NFL for a million reasons, and this is absolutely one of them.

So why do so many of us have less than rational reasons for actively hoping the weather come Sunday for the Super Bowl is downright hellacious?

Check that. We’re hoping it’s beyond hellacious. Like, to the point of adversely and immensely impacting the outcome of the league’s biggest game. To the point of causing this league we love in a million ways nothing less than abject, public embarrassment.

Why? Well, it doesn’t take a psych degree to analyze. And the answer is about as deep as a Kelly Osbourne interview: We, as a people, generally disdain flat stupidity.

Is this not one of the dumbest ideas in recent sports history? Yes, it is.

This is the Super Bowl, not Packer-Bears in late December. We get off on Packers-Bears in late December because it’s gives us an example, proof, that the NFL is as tough as we want and need it to be. But we don’t want or need any such proof when the league takes the biggest sports-and-entertainment stage in the world.

What we want and need are ideal conditions in which the two best, battle-tested teams in the league we love in a million ways get to lock horns and have a reasonable shot at playing at the highest level of execution possible.

The worst possible conditions, it stands to reason, would prevent the league we love in a million ways to ever again give us even the slightest reason to love it less.

Manning’s legacy: If it isn’t based on statistics, it’s nothing more than an opinion. This is the notion one should apply whenever the word “legacy” pops up in a sports argument.

One’s legacy is impossible to quantify. Stats are not. Thus, one’s view of a sports figure’s legacy is little more than an opinion, because opinions are impossible to quantify, too.

Unless, of course, you’re simply counting one’s opinions. That would be a stat of sorts, too, but that merely muddies the waters.

So please: Enough about Peyton Manning’s legacy in relation to the outcome to Sunday’s outcome. If you really stop to absorb it all, the mere fact that a sports figure’s legacy gets called into question at all serves as irrefutable evidence that he or she is an all-time great.

Nobody ponders the legacies of Marvin Bernard or Sonny Parker or Steve DeBerg. We ponder the legacies of Barry Bonds, Chris Mullin and Steve Young — all-time greats.

Manning could lose every game he plays for the rest of his career, and he’s still going down as an all-time great. He’s still going to the Hall of Fame. And there is no Best Ever wing in any Hall of Fame, so let’s all move on to a more entertaining, and far less tired, debate.

Is Lee All-Star-worthy?: You want a rousing debate? Get into it with a hardcore Warriors fan about David Lee’s worthiness as an NBA All-Star.

He’s been an All-Star before, says the Die-Hard Dub, and he’s playing even better this season. The obvious counter to that is to tick off the names of Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard and LaMarcus Aldridge as more worthy frontcourt candidates.

It’s a tough call, but it’s not. Lee has been amazing, Tuesday night notwithstanding, but it’s going to be impossible for the league to stomach naming two guys from a team currently sitting seventh in the conference standings to its best-of-the-best bunch.

Even harder to stomach, though, will be seeing a clown like the Sacramento Kings’ DeMarcus Cousins go ahead of a pro’s pro like Lee.

Mychael Urban has covered Bay Area sports for more than 22 years as a contributor to Comcast SportsNet, CSNBayArea.com, KNBR, MLB.com, ESPN The Magazine and various newspapers.